The woman recently charged with murdering her 6-year-old son in DeKalb County more than 20 years ago was a teenage mother when she fatally shot a man in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1994 and went to prison, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has learned.
Teresa Black, née Bailey, was 16 years old when she shot and killed Jimmy Lee Samuels, 40, in May of that year, the Charlotte Observer reported at the time. Black was living at a boarding house with Samuels and his girlfriend Tomekya Wooten, then 23, in southwest Charlotte.
According to the Observer, Samuels and Wooten were involved in a fight that turned violent. At one point, police said Samuels hit Wooten with a golf club, the newspaper reported. Black and Wooten were walking away from the boarding house when Samuels ran after them and began trying to convince Wooten to stay.
When Wooten refused, she and Samuels resumed fighting and Black pulled out a gun, the Observer reported. As the fight again became physical, Black fired a warning shot into the air, then shot Samuels in the back. He was taken to a hospital, where he died. Black was initially charged with murder, the Observer reported.
When Black was arrested, her son, William Dashawn Hamilton, was nearly 2 years old. He was born June 23, 1992, less than two weeks after his mother’s 15th birthday.
On Feb. 26, 1999, his body was found near a Decatur cemetery and remained unidentified for more than 20 years.
In September 1994, just a few months after Samuels’ death, Black pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter, according to Mecklenburg County court records obtained by the AJC. She went to prison for more than a year and was released in November 1995 at age 18.
No public records could be found that shed light on Black’s life with Hamilton after her release from prison, but during that time period, the woman who would eventually help identify Hamilton’s body helped care for the boy.
That woman, who was identified only as Ava, became friends with Black in the late 1990s, she said in a video released by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
“He was everything to me because I wasn’t a mother then,” she said. “I did a lot for him. I cooked for him, took him for his first bath, taught him how to tie his shoes.”
In December 1998, Black abruptly pulled Hamilton out of school and moved to Atlanta. About three months later, Hamilton’s unidentified body was found in DeKalb, while Black returned to Charlotte with inconsistent explanations about her son’s whereabouts.
During her brief time in Atlanta, Black worked at a strip club on Cleveland Avenue and may have received assistance from the Atlanta Day Shelter for Women and Children, DeKalb District Attorney Sherry Boston said during a recent news conference to announce Black’s charges.
After Black returned to Charlotte, she was arrested several times on minor charges between 1999 and 2003, public records show. In February 2003, she married Luquese Jufund Black and took his last name, according to county records. Luquese Black was arrested later that year on drug charges and spent about five years in North Carolina state prison after being convicted as a habitual felon in 2015.
For several years after her marriage, Black fell off the public record. She resurfaced in Anchorage, Alaska, in 2010 when she was taken to court by a local hospital over unpaid medical bills. According to court records, she lived in Anchorage until sometime in 2017, when she moved to Phoenix, Arizona. In March 2018, she was evicted from her Phoenix apartment, court records show.
On the 20th anniversary of the discovery of Hamilton’s body, NCMEC released a new digital facial reconstruction of the unidentified boy. The organization’s director of communications, Angeline Hartmann, a former TV reporter who covered the original story, released a podcast exploring the mysterious cold case.
Credit: Henri Hollis
Credit: Henri Hollis
The digital rendering and Hartmann’s in-depth podcast sparked renewed media interest in the case, but it was not until the next year that Ava found the NCMEC images. She told Hartmann she continuously searched for Hamilton from the time he disappeared, but it wasn’t until 2020 that she began looking at children whose bodies had not been identified.
When Ava saw the rendering, she called Hartmann and gave investigators the clue they needed to identify Hamilton.
After positively identifying the boy using DNA technology and linking Black to his killing with DNA evidence, the DeKalb DA’s office took out warrants against Black. She was taken into custody in Phoenix on June 29, less than a week after Hamilton would have turned 30.
Boston said Black was set to be extradited to DeKalb to face the charges against her, which include murder, aggravated assault and concealing the death of another. The DA’s office has not shared further updates about when Black may arrive in Georgia or if her health could affect the extradition process.
Credit: Maricopa County Sheriff's Office
Credit: Maricopa County Sheriff's Office
According to Phoenix news station KPNX, Black, now 45, arrived at her first appearance hearing in a wheelchair. In her booking photo from the Maricopa County Jail, she wears a nasal cannula, a tube that provides extra oxygen for people with respiratory issues.
Boston’s team is still building its case and is asking for more information from the public. Anyone who may have known or interacted with Black or Hamilton between December 1998 and February 1999 is asked to call the DeKalb DA Office’s cold case tip line at 404-371-2444. Callers may remain anonymous.
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